to start the discussion, the Aggregate Polygons license information is as follows:
- Basic: No
- Standard: No
- Advanced: Yes
To recreate this yourself you could use the Geoprocessing tool - Generate Near Table. For each input feature you will get a distance and bearing to the 'near features' out to your selected distance. The results will show you the polygons candidates for merge. The closest thing to aggregate polygons is the Editing tool Modify/Merge Features that allow you combine two or move selected features. You could use the Table generated by the 1st command to select candidate polygons, then activate the Merge/Modify Feature tool, save, then move to next candidate.
